Sister Marionette Coll, IHM

Sister Marionette Coll died on Wednesday 28 October 2026 at Our Lady of Peace Residence, aged 104. No cause of death was made public.

She was predeceased by two brothers, William and John (Ed), and seven sisters. Her funeral Mass of Christian Burial was held at Our Lady of Peace Residence in Dunmore on 7 November 2026, after a viewing and prayer service the day before, and she was buried at St. Catherine's Cemetery in Moscow, Pennsylvania. Her death was reported by the Catholic Review.

Marionette Coll was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on 17 November 1921, the daughter of Frank X. Coll and Mary Broderick Coll. Her congregation's obituary describes her as the fifth child in a family of ten, while she told a television reporter in 2025 that she was one of twelve children in a large Irish Catholic family.

At 17 she decided to enter religious life. She later recalled travelling to the convent on the night train from Pittsburgh by herself, with a special travel card for clergy that the sisters had arranged for her, even though she was not yet clergy.

She entered the Sisters, Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary in Scranton on 8 September 1939, made her first profession of vows on 8 May 1942 and her final profession on 1 August 1947.

Sister Marionette earned a B.A. in education at Marywood College and an M.A. in mathematics at Fordham University, and did further study at the University of Notre Dame and New York University on National Science Foundation grants.

Her teaching posts were: - St. Ephrem School, Brooklyn, New York, 1942 to 1943 - Immaculate Conception School, Lock Haven, Pennsylvania, 1943 to 1947 - St. Patrick's High School, Scranton, 1947 to 1954 - Immaculata High School, New York City, 1954 to 1964

In 1964 she was assigned to Marywood College, where she represented the IHM Sisters in the college's Golden Jubilee Campaign and later became its Vice President for Development. In 1978 she became Director of Communications for the IHM Congregation, a post she held for sixteen years. She then served as coordinator of the IHM Center and later took a part-time job as an office assistant at St. Agnes School in Baltimore, Maryland.

In 2011 she retired to Our Lady of Peace Residence, the congregation's care home in Dunmore near Scranton, where she continued to serve as a Telespond volunteer and a prayer minister.

She became the oldest sister in the IHM Congregation. When she turned 104 on 17 November 2025, sisters, friends and staff held a party for her in the residence dining room, and the Scranton Times-Tribune and local television covered the occasion. The congregation called her a champion Scrabble player, and she said she planned to keep up her daily games. Asked about her long life, she said: "You take it one day at a time, and you try to make that a good day."

Her closest companion in later life was Sister Maureen Schrimpe, IHM, her friend of more than fifty years.

Over 87 years in the IHM Congregation, Sister Marionette taught mathematics and other subjects to generations of pupils in Pennsylvania and New York, helped raise funds for Marywood College and shaped how her congregation spoke to the wider world as its communications director.

Her life spanned the presidency of Warren G. Harding to the age of artificial intelligence, and within the Church it bridged the Latin Mass of her youth and the changes of the Second Vatican Council. The congregation invited memorial gifts to support its retired sisters.